Bina Adds RNA-Seq Analysis Capabilities

By Bio-IT World Staff 

 

October 22, 2013 | Bina Technologies has announced the general availability of its all-new RNA-Seq analysis capabilities. This new application delivers fast, accurate and scalable analysis of RNA-Seq datasets on top of the company’s Bina Genomic Analysis Platform (see, Bina Launches Bina On-Demand, Exome Analysis”).

 

Recent advances in using Next-Gen Sequencing (NGS) for transcriptomics have proved to be highly precise compared to traditional microarray methods. To take full advantage of these developments, the Bina Platform has built-in capabilities that process up to 1,000 RNA-Seq samples per month, a considerable upgrade in scalability and speed of analysis over current solutions. 

 

"Today’s traditional methods for handling RNA-Seq suffer from low quality and slow turnaround times," said Narges Bani Asadi, founder and CEO of Bina Technologies, in a statement. "With the addition of accelerated RNA-Seq to our suite of whole genome and exome accelerated workflows, researchers and clinicians can now better employ a mixture of NGS samples and analysis pipelines in their discovery and development programs—quickly, accurately and at scale—while still managing costs tightly."

 

The standard Bina RNA-Seq workflow includes several widely-adopted, open-source software tools such as TopHat2, Bowtie2, and Cufflinks. It also includes support for multiple sample merging, an important feature than enhances transcript identification.

 

Another significant, new feature of the Bina Platform is its compatibility with several newer versions of the Genomic Analysis Toolkit (GATK) suite of software tools developed by The Broad Institute. For whole genome and exome samples, Bina has now extensively tested and validated the Bina Platform with all versions of GATK from v1.6 to v2.7, including GATK Lite. This flexibility allows researchers to analyze their data more quickly and accurately while taking advantage of the many recent improvements of GATK.

 

"Genomic analysis is complex, and the stakes are high," said Asadi. "For us, the goal has always been to deliver a fully integrated and robust solution. We’re confident that the Bina Platform will help significantly accelerate genomic analysis and empower users to gain even greater insights into disease causes."

 

In addition to this announcement, Bina is unveiling a new web-based program called Test Drive that allows researchers to use their own well-characterized whole genome, whole exome, and RNA samples in order to evaluate the Bina Genomics Analysis Platform. "The Bina ‘Test Drive’ program allows researchers to experience the power and performance of the Bina Platform for themselves," said Mark Sutherland, SVP of Business Development at Bina.

 

‘Test Drive’ is available at http://www.binatechnologies.com/test-drive-bina-platform.